The present invention relates to network switching, and more specifically, this invention relates to dual purpose on-chip buffer memory of a network switch.
Typical network switches have an on-chip buffer memory which is used to store transitory data, such as packets for ingress/egress, headers, paths, etc., which may be useful in switching data across a network.
However, typical network switches, after receiving a packet, must perform a search on a look-up table in order to determine a path with which to send a packet out. This operation may be quite resource intensive, since the look-up table may contain many thousands of entries, and the searching function can become a point of latency in the process of switching the packet.